small treasures and big sightings

One of my favorite things about being in Africa is being in the bush. You never quite know what you’re going to see. Sometimes it is just small encounters with typically shy animals that let you watch them while they go about their daily activities. I like to think of those as “small treasures.” Other times it is big sightings when you see the things that most people who come to Africa are hoping to see.

With visitors in from the States we’ve taken the opportunity to combine work with pleasure over the last week or so. First, we took a three night trip down to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve so that Paul could check out an alternative route for the trans-Kalahari trips he’ll do beginning in August. You may remember the lion in camp story from last August, this is the same touring company that will offer three trans-Kalahari trips this year. We were scouting out an alternative route to cut some of the driving time off in the South to North transit of the Kalahari in order to incorporate more animal viewing opportunities and a visit to a traditional bushmen village.

The Central Kalahari is such a unique place with vast open spaces (can’t help singing the Dixie Chicks “Wide Open Spaces” in my head), beautiful sunsets and abundant populations of gemsbok, springbok, jackal, kori bustards, and other critters. While we didn’t have lions in camp this time, we did have an amazing encounter with three bat eared foxes foraging at sunset. Unfortunately, due to the lighting, we did not get great pictures of them which was sad because one of them was so close to the vehicle. They are about the size of a raccoon or smallish dog. They have tiny little masks, like raccoons, so they look like little bandits but rather large ears the swap between straight up like rabbits or angled to the side like Yoda (although I’ve honestly never seen a bat with those types of ears). Quite cute! This is a classic example of a “small treasure.”

The visit to Molopo was also interesting. This is a bushmen village that, for a period of time was abandoned when the government forced the removal of the bushmen from the Central Kalahari. A lawsuit in 2007 resulted in their gaining permission to return to the Kalahari.The new transit route will work but unfortunately, since it is not used much, all the thorny brush have grown over into the road and it scrapped the heck out of the vehicle's new paint job. It sounded like a thousand children with pointy sticks standing on the sides of the road scratching the vehicle as we drove by. Ouch!

Yesterday we took a day trip up to Moremi Game Reserve (our third day trip so far this winter) to do some mapping of the new campsites for the mobile safari operators. They occasionally move the campsites so that the previously used ones can rehab and return to their natural state. After a full day in the park driving around, on the way out, I spotted some movement about 200 yards off as we barreled down the bumpy dirt road. My brain didn’t know what it was but it registered as something out of the ordinary. It looked like something long, straight and brownish red going up the side of a tree. A cheetah tail, perhaps? I ask Eddy (Paul’s partner who was driving, we had to leave Paul in the office to work – sad!) to stop and go back. This is always a potentially embarrassing thing to do as I’ve many a time spotted what I call “stump creatures” (things I think are animals but are actually stumps).

But when we backed up and I pointed out the tree I thought I saw it in, Shadreck (one of the guides for Hemingway safari company) spotted it. “Ma Paul. There it is. A leopard with his kill in the tree.” (He calls me “Ma Paul”, a common way of referring to the spouse of someone.) I thought he was kidding and punched him in the shoulder for teasing me. But he wasn’t kidding. Far off in the tree was the carcass of the dead impala on one side and the head of the leopard on the other.

We made our way over to get a closer look and had one of the most amazing leopard spotting I’ve ever had. He breathed heavily with exhaustion. The kill had been recent as what I saw a few seconds earlier had been his first effort to hoist his kill up into the tree. When we departed, he grabbed the kill by the neck and powered him even farther up the tree. A few minutes later and we wouldn’t have seen anything at all. Leopard sightings are always lucky.

Today we go up to Savuti. Last time we camped there a hyena took a chomp out of our wash bowl!